A New App Called “Moment” is Going Help You Easily Add 15 minutes Of Prayer Time To Your Busy Day
What if I could give you 15 extra minutes every day? What if you could give yourself that time? It isn’t hard, in fact it is super easy, and you won’t even know you are trying. The effort will be invisible to you!
What would you choose to do with it? I am sure that there is a list of things vying for your attention that you would like to accomplish. Our lives are full of obligations with family, friends, work that really do need to get done. The one thing that I hear over and over again when I ask people if they take time to pray daily, is that they never have enough time to get it in.
You can very easily make new time available to you to pray.
The reality is that yes we are extremely busy, but in our day and age some of that “busyness” is a product of the countless things that DISTRACT us from what is important. Do we really know how much time we inadvertently devote to things like Facebook, twitter, or other social media? How about the latest viral video or news feed? For some reason we always have time to watch it, read it, or hear it, but how is this impacting our lives? If we were made aware of how much time we “lose” every day to our devices, I think it would change our perspective on not having enough time to pray. The Moment app is designed to do just this; find a healthy balance between the demands of our everyday lives and the “life” that is sometimes lived through our digital devices.
Praying 15 Minutes
Moment tracks how much you use your device each day, be forewarned, the total time may shock you! It helps you find the “extra” time in your day that you need to do what is really important to you – like pray for at least 15 minutes every day. The app gives you the ability to create daily limits on your device usage, and offers “occasional nudges” when you’re approaching those limits.
You can easily see what apps you use the most.
The app’s creator, Kevin Holesh, says he built Moment for himself after realizing how much his digital addictions were affecting his real-world relationships. At the end of the day he would take out his phone to ‘unwind’, but what he began to realize is that this time was taking away time he could be spending with the important people in his life. As we all know, sometimes, too much of a good thing is just too much.
As an iOS developer himself, Holesh decided to build a solution – yes, in the form of an iPhone app. This app won’t take away more time from what is important, as it isn’t meant to be actively used. Instead, it’s “designed to be invisible,” says Holesh. That is, after you set up Moment the first time, you never need to open it up again. The app will just run in the background, alerting you as to when you’re going over your daily limits. Holesh tells us that most people don’t realize how much they’re on their phone or other devices we have available.
The Moment app also features family monitoring
Our Digital Addictions
Like Holesh, many of us know in the back of our minds that the various digital environments we expose ourselves to every day is having an impact on our real-world existence. Companies are looking for ways to embed technology into every aspect of our lives. They want us to be “connecting” all the time through mobile devices and computers, at home, at work and in the car. We are even connected through our bodies, with watches, eyeglass and maybe even through contact lenses one day. On the opposing side there is an undercurrent of fear about what it means for technology to continue to infiltrate every aspect of our lives. Most importantly there is a very real impact technology has on our spiritual lives and our relationship with God. We need to invest time in our relationships in order to have healthy and loving relationships with one another – this is no different with the relationship we have with God. If we are honest with ourselves, the time we spend developing our relationship with God is usually the first to be tossed aside when we feel we simply don’t have the time.
Who You Hug in the Morning
If you find yourself waking up and “embracing” your phone before anyone else in your life, then this app is for you. If you find yourself treating ‘real-world’ conversations as second priority to the texts coming into your phone, then this app is for you. If you find yourself spending more time on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram than you wish to admit, than this app is for you. The Moments app will help you take the steps you want in the right direction and it may even be a complete game changer in your life.
You can set daily limits for apps and usage. This is great for getting to the daily mass readings.
For Holesh, he has seen a huge difference in his life. When he first started using the app he was spending 75 minutes per day on his iPhone. He is now only spending 40 minutes a day. That is a difference of 35 minutes a day! Think about the difference it would make in your life if you committed that new found time to developing relationships with those you love in your life, including spending 15 of those minutes with your God.
The app has become Holesh’s main business. He has been able to generate revenue through the in-app purchase that lets you unlock the daily limit settings. So if you want to fully implement the app, know that you are supporting someone who is trying to make the same positive changes in his life. The app is free to try, so check it out. See how your estimates of how much time you spend on your device compares with reality. Who knows, this app may be even give you that extra time you need to spend time in prayer every day.
If you do end up downloading this app and you find yourself with a little less screen time and a little more ‘real’ time, I hope you take some of that time to pray. You can try out the Word Among Us app for a free 14 day trial; reading through the daily readings will take just a short time out of your day. It’s a start, but we all have to start somewhere. I hope you take this challenge and that is leads to a deeper your relationship with God. Reclaim those lost “Moments”in your day and choose to invest in what matters most.
Here are a couple of reviews from the app store:
Real eye opener. Amazing life tool in the tech age.
If you’d have told me before using Moment that I might spend up to 12 hours a day looking at my phone, I would have put my foot down. “There is no way I could spend that much time glued to my screen. That’s 50% of my day! Impossible.”
Sadly, I discovered not only was this possible, but a trend for me during my winter break from school.
The numbers don’t lie. 20 minutes on Facebook here, 45 minutes on Instagram there, it adds up with lightning speed.
This app is not just a means to make you feel bad about your screen time. It is a constructive tool to really step back and see where you might be wasting the precious few hours of your day. The longer you use the app the better. You are able to see averages for your usage, and (I believe this is a pro feature, but very well worth the upgrade) which apps in particular are sucking the life out of you.
Other features this app gives you (just get the pro version to ensure you get them all) are things like manually setting your desired time limit goal, the option to “kick you off” of your phone once you hit that limit, the ability to give yourself gentle reminders of the time spent in intervals you can choose.
Overall this has become one of my favorite apps. I’m learning a lot about how much I let technology rule my day, and am working hard to reclaim my daily life so I can enjoy things in the real world. Give Moment a try, it might be the best decision you’ll ever make.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
